Leaders Break Ground on Fitzwater Rowhomes Renovation
SALISBURY, Md. – State and local leaders broke ground on a major housing rehabilitation project in Salisbury on Thursday afternoon.
The 12 connected brick rowhomes on Fitzwater Street are a familiar sight to anyone traveling through the westside of Salisbury. The properties, now well over 100 years old, are due for some much-needed restoration inside and out. Plans to renovate the properties were first announced in Oct. 2025, but today, the work begins.
City of Salisbury leaders were joined by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), who had a major part in funding the project. The development, called Westport, has become Maryland’s latest UPLIFT community, also known as Utilizing Progressive Lending Investments to Finance Transformation. The primary goal of the program is to increase property values and provide wealth-building homeownership opportunities for historically redlined communities.
“But as we start to reinvest in this corridor, in this neighborhood, one of the things that we know is that affordable homeownership is just as important as affordable rental housing,” DHCD Secretary Jake Day said. “And so we’ve got to find ways and create tools to support affordable homeownership — and that’s exactly what we’ve done here.”
The renovated rowhomes are set to become affordable housing for existing residents renting in the surrounding areas. The City has agreed that developers will preserve as much of the homes’ history as possible while incorporating energy-efficient upgrades. DHCD invested $900,000 into the project in the hopes that it will help directly connect local families to home ownership opportunities.
Further, these homes will be sold in compliance with the new Maryland Mortgage Program, which offers first-time homebuyers a 30-year, fixed-rate home loan with a competitive interest rate and 5% down payment assistance.
“I think there will be 12 families that will have a home with a mortgage that they can afford,” Secretary Day continued. “And with the new Maryland Mortgage Program specifically for UPLIFT funded projects like this, these 12 families will have cheaper mortgage with down-payment assistance [better] than the market could provide. And even better than what the Maryland Department of Housing could have provided last week.”
Secretary Day says the homes are expected to be available by the end of this year, into the start of 2027.
